Last week, something historic dropped through my letterbox: issue 80 of The Philosophers’ Magazine, its 20th anniversary edition. Since I gave up its editorship in 2010 I’ve not been involved in its production, but if anything that makes me even more pleased to see it still going. Like any good parent, my ultimate wish was for my baby to have a life of its own and not always depend on me for its survival.

I wrote a piece about the early days of TPM for the celebratory edition. I’ve also been musing about the difference between then and now. From a personal point of view, twenty years is both an eternity and the blink of an eye. The time has flown but when I think back to myself then it seems like another life: in a bedsit in Finsbury Park with a partner I’m long-separated from, before I had published a single journalistic article or written a book.

But how does twenty years look from the perspective of philosophy? I’ve always thought of the discipline as somewhat glacial. “Recent developments” span decades, not years, let alone months. However, thinking back to the late 1990s when I did my PhD and started the magazine, I can see several significant things have changed.

First, it seems to me that the days of people doing armchair philosophy of science or mind are now largely gone. When I read philosophy of mind, I needed to know next to nothing about how the brain actually worked. Knowing that neurones fire in the brain when mental events occurr was good enough. Two decades ago people who got seriously into neuroscience, for example, were often dismissed as no longer really doing philosophy. Now, it is those who are not fully versed in the science who will be accused of doing substandard philosophy. This looks to me like a wholly positive development.

Related to this has been the explosion of experimental philosophy. Dismissed by some as a fad, “X-Phi” saw philosophers questioning reliance on intuitions, instead trying to find out what and how people actually thought. Like any fledgling sub-discipline, quality of the early work was very mixed but again I think this has been a positive step. Philosophy’s over-reliance on hunches has been its embarrassing secret.

A third major change concerns the position of women in philosophy. Aware of their marginalisation, we devoted the fifth issue of their magazine to this subject. What we have seen since is a mixture of progress combined with ever greater recognition and anger that this progress is not enough. The blog What’s It Like To Be a Woman in Philosophy? opened many people’s eyes to the casual sexism encountered by far too many. Work by leading philosophers such as Jennifer Saul, Miranda Fricker, Rae Langton and Jennifer Hornsby has cast light on the problems, both in the sense of bringing them into the open and bringing analytical clarity to them. At the same time, when so many of our best philosophers are now women, the question of whether women had as much aptitude for the discipline as men – which was for many a live one in the late 20th century – can now be considered closed.

The final change has been philosophy’s relationship with the intelligent general public. Thirty years ago, it hardly had one and nor did it care for one. When Nigel Warburton published Philosophy: The Basics in 1992, it did not help his academic career one bit. Slowly, that changed. We like to think TPM played a role but I’ve always thought the real game-changer was the success of Simon Blackburn’s Think. No one could dismiss attempts to reach a wider audience when someone of Blackburn’s calibre did it with such skill and success (and with Oxford University press to boot).

Despite this progress, philosophy remains marginal in the cultural and intellectual life of Britain. Few philosophy books sell very well and those that do tend to be very general introductions. But at least the direction of change is positive, as it is with scientific literacy, reality-checking and the status of women. Twenty years on, there is plenty to cheer but still very much to do. Time to both raise a glass and remain sober.

]]>3573The Illuminati: maybe not such a mad ideahttp://www.microphilosophy.net/is-the-illuminati-running-the-world-maybe-its-not-such-a-mad-idea/
Wed, 14 Feb 2018 18:31:10 +0000http://www.microphilosophy.net/?p=3570When we dig for the truth, we flirt with madness. But in a world where hidden power is all too real, it’s the only sane thing to do.

]]>3570What philosophy can teach us about tackling abusehttp://www.microphilosophy.net/what-philosophy-can-teach-us-about-tackling-abuse/
Wed, 14 Feb 2018 18:28:28 +0000http://www.microphilosophy.net/?p=3568Inadequate processes are not the source of the problem, although they are part of it. The word that has been used most frequently to describe the source of Oxfam’s malaise is its “culture”, the corporate equivalent of “character”.

]]>3568The power of second thoughtshttp://www.microphilosophy.net/the-power-of-second-thoughts/
Mon, 12 Feb 2018 10:00:19 +0000http://www.microphilosophy.net/?p=3561There are so many homeless people on the streets of Britain that I rarely stop for those asking for help. I try, at least, to acknowledge their existence with a quick “sorry” or sometimes just a pathetic “what can I do?” shrug. So it was not exceptional when I raced past a man in London last week with no more than a mumbled apology.

Ten or twenty yards later, however, I stopped. I turned to see the man was still in sight, meandering in my direction. I gestured to him to follow me, pointing to a Prêt across the road. I got him lunch and went on my way.

Let me make it clear: I am not particularly altruistic. I give virtually none of my free time to voluntary work and less of my money than I think I should. I’m telling the story not to signal my virtue, but because of why, on this occasion, I went back to offer the help I had first refused.

John Darley and Daniel Batson

I am sure many of you have heard about John Darley and Daniel Batson’s 1973 paper in which they tested people’s willingness to stop to help someone in evident and acute need. One of their key findings was that simply being in a bit of hurry for a non-urgent appointment massively reduced the likelihood of acting as a good Samaritan. Whereas 63% of experimental subjects stopped to help when not in a hurry, only 10% did when they were.

People often say that such findings show how amoral people are and that the real reasons why we are or are not good are largely situational. Character or virtue has nothing to do with it. What such Jeremiahs ignore is the possibility that knowing more about these hitherto unknown mechanisms might enable us to counter them.

This is exactly what happened on the London street. I was in a hurry, running slightly late for a meeting. So when I observed myself brushing off this middle-aged, foreign man begging for food in a cold, harsh city, I realised that I was acting exactly as those people in Darley and Batson’s experiment had. This made me reconsider my actions.

Although the plight of the homeless is terrible, it’s debatable whether individuals can do anything to help, and in London at least there is no shortage of places offering food. However, I do offer the occasional gift of food to at least give some recognition of humanity, a signal to recipient that the world has not stopped caring and a check on my own incipient indifference. Realising how easily I had passed him by made me think now was a good time to issue such a challenge and help someone who deserved a hot lunch at least as much as I did.

My point in telling the story is simply to show how we are not condemned always to act according to unconscious prompts or to follow the distorted thinking driven by our cognitive biases. Our weapons against the hidden springs of thought and action are simple: more knowledge of how they work and getting into the habit of questioning, forcing the second thought that might challenge the first.

In our thinking, this means little more than developing the habit of asking “Is that really true?” of factual claims and “Does that really follow?” of arguments. Philosophy and critical thinking can alert us to the many specific ways in which conclusions do not follow, but I think knowing these details is less important than developing the questioning habit. Someone who stops to think will usually be able to spot if a conclusion doesn’t follow even if they don’t know the technical name of the fallacy, and without that habit those who know their ad hominem from their modus ponens are as gullible as anyone else.

Countering the kinds of cognitive biases uncovered by psychology is more difficult, and even people like Daniel Kahneman have suggested it’s often impossible to do so. I’m more hopeful. It takes two things: reminding yourself of the biases often enough so that they move closer to the forefront of consciousness; and then regularly checking your own reactions rather than simply accepting them.

To give another example, implicit bias is hard to counter and no-one can claim to be free of it. But people can become more aware of it so that when they find themselves, say, more impressed by a male speaker than a female one, they can check whether that’s really because the former is saying smarter things than the latter.

We’re never going to be free of the distortions of automatic first thoughts. But by getting into the habit of having second, questioning ones, we can at least be less under their spell. The habit of thinking really can challenge unthinking habits.

]]>3561Funzing in Bristolhttp://www.microphilosophy.net/funzing-in-bristol/
Fri, 09 Feb 2018 20:27:14 +0000http://www.microphilosophy.net/?p=3559THE PHILOSOPHY OF FREE WILL – 20 MARCH, BRISTOL. Are you free? Or are you just following the hidden commands of unconscious processes, genetic dispositions, social conditioning and manipulation? Philosopher JB argues that those who deny we have free will are starting with a misguided and unrealistic idea of what it is. Only by understanding what it really means to be free we can make the most of our freedom. A Funzing event at Racks Bar, Bristol at 19:00. Full details and booking here.
]]>3559The ungrateful travellerhttp://www.microphilosophy.net/the-ungrateful-traveller/
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 08:58:09 +0000http://www.microphilosophy.net/?p=3556

The less-crowded exterior of Wat Phra Kaew

Last week I went to Bangkok. Returning home, the question on my mind was how did such an astonishing statement become so mundane? Just one generation ago, people grew up in world where air travel was impossibly romantic. Now, any moderately affluent person can get on a plane and go anywhere.

But think about it: I flew non-stop for 6,000 miles across seven time zones in the world’s largest passenger airline. In 12 hours I travelled further from my home than the vast majority of humankind have done in their lifetimes. Little than 72 hours later I did the same in reverse. Most of us retain some sense of the wonder of all this. For example, a few days ago, when Carl Miller from the think-tank demos landed in San Francisco, his first thought was “Wow, air travel is genuinely amazing. I’m on the other side of the world.”

But although I know how lucky I am to be able to take advantage of the jet age, I don’t always really feel this fortune. That’s why I almost felt guilty at how unexcited I was to be going to this unknown-to-me Asian capital. True, this was a work trip and I only had one jet-lagged day to explore the city. But still: a day in Bangkok! If anything, shouldn’t that make me even more eager to take it all in?

My coolness can’t be explained by an overdose of air miles. I may have flown more than both of my parents and all of their nine siblings put together but I’m hardly a member of the global hyper mobility club of frequent flyers. I’ve had many more years without a single long-haul flight than ones with.

However, I don’t think sheer ingratitude explains it either. There are good reasons why not every trip to a far-flung place sets my pulse racing. In my experience, the most memorable travel involves eye-opening or widening encounters with people, culture or nature. Some of my most vivid travel memories include the alpine scenery in Val d’Aosta, passing the time in the early hours of a bitterly cold morning at a 24-hour White Castle fast food restaurant in Indianapolis, tracking chimpanzees in Kibale national park in Uganda, and being offered food and drink by an elderly woman who assumed we were pilgrims because we were walking the Jakobsweg in Austria.

A lot of travel seems almost designed to make such experiences unlikely. Sightseeing may be worthwhile it rarely brings any sense of intimacy. Wat Phra Kaew (The Temple of the Emerald Buddha) in Bangkok, for instance, was a remarkable building, but I walked around it in a crowd that made the Sistine Chapel look half-empty. At the same time, going off the tourist trail hardly guarantees an interesting time. You wouldn’t recommend a visitor to Britain to go to Slough in order to see the “real” England, even though that’s exactly what they would see.

Travel is best if and when it provides opportunities to widen our horizons, or see and sense wonderful new things. Modern travel doesn’t always do this, in part because globalisation has made many big cities more alike than they are different. Visiting my father’s home country, Italy, for example, no longer guarantees I’ll get a better Italian meal than I would in Bristol, where I live.

In Bangkok, however, I did enjoy a very enriching global, cross-cultural encounter. I was at a workshop in which Indian political philosophers presented papers and Chinese ones responded. It took place in the anonymous surroundings of an international chain hotel which could have been anywhere. And because I was there to record podcasts, people anywhere will soon be able to listen in to the key ideas being shared.

There are now innumerable other such resources to give us windows into other cultures. We can invite the word into our homes any day, just as we can travel the world without needing to challenge our world-views one iota. Travel is no longer the surest way of broadening the mind, if ever it was. When ideas travel so freely, we have less reason to do so.

I hope I never take my opportunities to see more of there world for granted. But to be able to travel is a privilege which is valuable for the opportunities it provides, not in itself. Because so many of those opportunities can be taken without moving, and because moving doesn’t always offer up those opportunities after all, although I am grateful whenever I have the chance to travel, I think it’s fine that the prospect does not always thrill me.

]]>3556Never Had It So Goodhttp://www.microphilosophy.net/never-had-it-so-good/
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 07:59:23 +0000http://www.microphilosophy.net/?p=3554By the time you read this, something truly dreadful might have blighted the world. Pinker does not prophesy that this won’t happen; he simply reminds us why it should not and need not, as long as we don’t give up the notion of the emancipatory power of reason to help illuminate the way forward. If that is naive, even more naive is the belief that despair, fatalism or superstition supplies a credible alternative.

]]>3554How we forgot the collective goodhttp://www.microphilosophy.net/how-we-forgot-the-collective-good/
Fri, 02 Feb 2018 17:04:47 +0000http://www.microphilosophy.net/?p=3552“UK plc” has become part of the ordinary lexicon. If anyone finds it objectionable, few say so. No one announced that from now on we should conceive of our country as a business, but gradually, imperceptibly, it became natural to do so. This is how so many cultural shifts happen. Ways of thinking mutate gradually, helped by changes in vocabulary that we accept without question.

A few weeks ago, I was reading an article about the best debut novelists in 2018 when one name seemingly leapt off the page and slapped me around the face. The accompanying photo and the article itself confirmed that the hot new writer in question was indeed the same man who I had interviewed in one the most interesting writing projects I have ever undertaken.

The seeds of this feature article were sown way back on the late 1980s. When I was an undergraduate, I had done some work experience at the Reading Evening Post. After my week was up, I continued to contribute extremely bad and ill-informed record reviews. Every week I’d cycle out to the paper’s offices the other side of town and pick up the week’s vinyl. We never got the really big releases, only the second-tier stuff the record companies needed plugging even in provincial newspapers.

Most of the records soon found themselves in charity shops, which didn’t so the bands or the shops much good. But two stood out as superior to the rest, so much so that in later years I re-bought them on CD. They were the debut releases of The Senators and King Swamp, both packed with great tunes, performed with character, well-produced on the Virgin label and with classy sleeves. Somehow, however, their talent hadn’t been rewarded. The Senators released two more albums before disbanding, King Swamp one.

Many years later, over a decade ago, I found myself wondering: what must it feel like to get that close the hitting the big time yet missing? Getting a contract with a major label was every band’s dream but in these cases it had marked the high point, not the start of something bigger. I pitched the idea to the Guardian’s magazine and they went for it.

I tracked all seven members of both bands down. Some had gone on to be successful in the music business in other ways. King Swamp guitarist Dominic Miller became Sting’s right-hand man, drummer Martyn Barker a respected session musician and composer, while for bassist Dave Allen Swamp was just one stage in a long musical career. Keyboardist Steve Halliwell had gone into teaching, while lead singer Walter Wray gave up his macho vocals to become a soft-spoken website designer. From The Senators, Jim Kitson became an actor while his brother Mick became an English teacher in Galway.

The story warmed my heart because there was very little bitterness, and no-car crashes, just a few licked wounds. The moral of the story was a simple but powerful one: what really mattered for all seven was the music, the creativity. As long as you can find a way of keeping on doing that, or whatever it is that moves you, you have succeeded as much as you need to, nice though it always is to get recognition and riches.

I loved the piece, but the Guardian editor did not. It was spiked, without even the opportunity to rework it. I was told it was due to crossed-wires, that they thought they were getting something about fame, not missing out on it. Perhaps there is some truth in this, but I have always suspected the real reason is that they expected more heartache, more breakdowns, and that the more upbeat truth was simply a less interesting narrative, at least from their point of view.

I never did publish the piece but fittingly, I consider it one of my most successful. Meeting wonderful, diverse people and learning from them is one the best reasons I have for writing. The process is the real reward, getting paid a means to that end. At the same time, it is as lovely coda to the story that one of its protagonists – Mick Kitson – is finally getting the recognition that all seven deserved.

So here’s to Mick, and also to the countless other creatives for whom sustaining their creativity is more than achievement enough.

]]>354420 Years of The Philosopher’s Magazinehttp://www.microphilosophy.net/20-years-of-the-philosophers-magazine/
Sun, 28 Jan 2018 11:35:16 +0000http://www.microphilosophy.net/?p=3550From proofreading in a bedsit to the marvels of philosophy by CD-Rom, Julian Baggini tells all…